Showdown looms over performance pay for teachers

Queensland Premier
Campbell Newman
is headed for a showdown with unions over plans to introduce performance-based bonuses for teachers and principals.

Mr Newman has described his $535 million Great Teachers = Great ­Results plan as a “fait accompli" despite ­­­oppo­sition from the Queensland Teachers’ Union and pressure to sign up to the federal government’s
Gonski
reforms.

“There is nothing in our plan that will not be implemented in Queensland," Mr Newman said. “It’s going to happen, simple as that."

In Victoria, however, the state ­government was forced to dump plans to introduce performance pay, to end an 18-month stand-off with the ­Australian Education Union. Instead, an in-principle agreement was signed last week between the state and the union which will mean Victorian­ ­teachers become the second-best paid in the country.

Salaries at the top level of the “expert teacher" category will rise by 16 per cent to $94,961 by May 2016 if the agreement is approved by Fair Work Australia.

The Liberal premiers of both Queensland and Victoria have criticised Prime Minister
Julia Gillard
’s Gonski proposals, which would see an extra $14.5 billion flow to schools over the next six years.

The reforms aim to put Australia among the top five countries in the world for reading, maths and science but do not include changes to teacher salaries. They steer well clear of the much-vexed issue of performance or bonus schemes.

Initial teacher salaries compare favourably with other professions but top out at between $80,000 and $90,000, and it is only by moving into management as principals that ­teachers can enter higher pay brackets.

Related Quotes

Company Profile

Lifting pay may boost outcomes

As state and federal leaders engaged in a war of words over the Gonski changes last week, the Business Council of Australia renewed its calls for the introduction of performance pay for teachers. In 2008, a study by the BCA recommended paying Australia’s best–­performing teachers as much as $130,000 a year, but that would raise the annual wages bill by $4 billion, or by 20 to 25 per cent.

“We should continue to improve teacher quality by introducing ­performance-based pay and full auto­nomy for principals in their hiring and firing," BCA chief
Tony Sheppard
said in an address to the National Press Club last week.

A set of professional standards for teachers is being introduced nationally, but the federal government’s 2010 ­election promise – to pay one-off cash bonuses for up to 25,000 teachers who reached the highest levels – has hit a wall. Assessments were due to occur this year – and the bonuses paid in 2014 – but it emerged earlier this month that the federal government would not force the states and territories to pay the bonuses.

Under Great Teachers = Great Results, 300 new “master teacher" ­positions will be created. Each primary school with a master teacher will receive a “resource package" of up to $75,000 over three years to support ­literacy and numeracy in the early years. Principals will be able to “access funds from a bonus pool to reward their top teachers and staff".

QTU president
Kevin Bates
said the government’s plan focused on the ­“divisive" measure of handing bonuses to principals and teachers, when the profession wanted extra resources to flow to students and classrooms.

“What it’s about is providing a ­political foil for the Gonski reforms devised by the federal government," Mr Bates told The Australian Financial Review.

“It is not an educational reform, it is a political tactic and that’s why it needs to be rejected out of hand."

But the Queensland Premier is ­adamant.

“Everything that we have is quite legally able to implemented," Mr ­Newman said. “It is not covered by enterprise bargaining agreements."

Monash University education dean
John Loughran
said serious consid­eration should be given to using some of the extra $14.5 billion that could flow to schools under the Gonski proposals on teachers’ salaries.

“For years we’ve been saying if you’re going to have better school education, you need more, highly qualified and paid teachers,“ he said.

The Grattan Institute’s
Ben Jensen
said spending more on pro­fessional development for existing teachers would deliver the biggest “bang for our buck".

Dr Jensen said much of the Queensland plan was good but negotiation with the union would be important.

“If you set up a system of teacher appraisal and feedback that unions are comfortable with, I think you’re going to get a lot better response around paying a small percentage of elite teachers a whole lot more money," he said.

“Once you have that elite level, it raises the status of the profession. The status of the profession is a huge issue in this country and bonus pay isn’t going to solve that."